Puerto Varas: 8 - 9 Mar
8 Mar:
An interesting trip over the Andes seeing just how violent wind can be. Crazy squalls, watersprouts and rainbows. Again impossible to tell whether the water was from the lake, the sky, or the ocean.
I then met Kevin and Christina for an expensive beer in the nice but kind of touristy town of Puerto Varas. A little while later Mike Graz picked me up on the way back from work to stay at their lovely house on shores of the picturesque Lake Llanqueue. He, and his wife Heather (unfortunately back in Cape Town working), are friends of mine from the Cape Town adventure racing community, and he is now a successful perlemoen aquaculture business launched by good old Irvine & Johnson.
9 Mar:
Did Ensenada (a town cross between a salad:ensalada and a pie:empanada) and
Lago Todos Los Santos (part of the Cruce Lagos to Bariloche),
Rio Pehue (where Mike, Heather, Jon, Wessel, etc. went white water rafting.),
Saltos Pehue (the Cataracts on the river),
then navigated to a shortcut track (Sendero Solatario) from the river up a couple of hundred [vertical] metres up Volcano Orsono. Turned out that this 6km track (from the tyre marks) is the most epic mountain bike singletrack, all through the rough forested volcanic rubble. Mike and Heather had better do this before they leave! Then walked down the most scenic smooth tar road back to Ensenada eating kilograms of blackberries, until Chilean family stopped us and showed us that we could also eat the minature pomegranite-looking berries called ¿Muerd? which were delicious, tasting slighty like minty breadfruit. A couple of kms later, the same family (in a double cab) passed us and offered us a lift back to Esenada, and then back to Puerto Varas. So we piled into the back with the dog, and had free, convenient ride home.
An interesting trip over the Andes seeing just how violent wind can be. Crazy squalls, watersprouts and rainbows. Again impossible to tell whether the water was from the lake, the sky, or the ocean.
I then met Kevin and Christina for an expensive beer in the nice but kind of touristy town of Puerto Varas. A little while later Mike Graz picked me up on the way back from work to stay at their lovely house on shores of the picturesque Lake Llanqueue. He, and his wife Heather (unfortunately back in Cape Town working), are friends of mine from the Cape Town adventure racing community, and he is now a successful perlemoen aquaculture business launched by good old Irvine & Johnson.
9 Mar:
Did Ensenada (a town cross between a salad:ensalada and a pie:empanada) and
Lago Todos Los Santos (part of the Cruce Lagos to Bariloche),
Rio Pehue (where Mike, Heather, Jon, Wessel, etc. went white water rafting.),
Saltos Pehue (the Cataracts on the river),
then navigated to a shortcut track (Sendero Solatario) from the river up a couple of hundred [vertical] metres up Volcano Orsono. Turned out that this 6km track (from the tyre marks) is the most epic mountain bike singletrack, all through the rough forested volcanic rubble. Mike and Heather had better do this before they leave! Then walked down the most scenic smooth tar road back to Ensenada eating kilograms of blackberries, until Chilean family stopped us and showed us that we could also eat the minature pomegranite-looking berries called ¿Muerd? which were delicious, tasting slighty like minty breadfruit. A couple of kms later, the same family (in a double cab) passed us and offered us a lift back to Esenada, and then back to Puerto Varas. So we piled into the back with the dog, and had free, convenient ride home.
posted by Colin at 6:11 am
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